Revit questions (Need feedback)

[ryanmcin]

The company that I work for is considering purchasing and using revit in the very near future, I will be very involved in the decision making process and I have some serious concerns about the appropriateness of this program in our company. I have prepared some background information and also a short list of concerns. I would appreciate any and all feedback.

Background:

Our office currently uses AutoCAD 2002, very about 5% of the office occasionally creating 3D models for creating section drawings and developing details. The remainder of the work is done in 2D. The nature of our work is generally small projects and the scope of work is limited to building construction only. Our structures are steel-framed modular buildings. Generally the same 12'x40' modular frame assembly will be used repeatedly to create the buildings. At this time we are considering having each team captain use revit and the remainder of the drafters on the team will continue to use AutoCAD. We have 9 teams and each team is made up of 3-4 drafters including the team captain. I am the cad manager for this company and would be responsible for some training and all of the support for the revit users. I have some background in the Arch. Desktop as well as ArchiCad, however it has been about 3 years since I have used either program. I have a full copy of revit that I have been reviewing and at this point I'm not sure if this program will be an asset or a disaster in our environment. I personally do not want to have 1/3 of the office using revit and rest using AutoCAD, but at this point it is out of my control.


The following are my concerns:

It is critical that projects created in revit can easily be edited in AutoCAD. In our office it is often necessary to have one drafter start a job and then have another drafter make the corrections or take over the project during it's creation. Since we will only be having 1/3 of our drafters using revit I want to be sure that drafters using AutoCAD will be able to edit the projects and be able to still use the revit model at a later point. My understanding of the product is that this scenario is unlikely.

It is critical that we can accurately show our structural design and use the revit model to create floor & roof framing plans as well as foundation plans, frame elevations, structural sections, & wall framing drawings. I have read about some users unhappiness with the structural capabilities of revit and on the other hands others have pleased. The biggest concern is the issue of time, we often will complete the documents for a project in as little as 2-3 days.

My final concern is the time frame for getting 10 drafters up to speed on revit, some of whom have little to know 3D drafting experience. We can't afford to have 1/3 of our work force out of commission for a long period of time.


In about a week we are going to have our autodesk reseller come in and give a demonstration of the product and it uses. I would like to use that demonstration along with the feedback and information gathered from this board to make a decision regarding our purchasing and using the program.

[bclarch]

Your case sounds like a close call. A firm that focuses on one project type can often be very productive with Autocad if everyone is familiar with the type of drawings that you produce and you have a lot of standard details. If you could attach some PDFs of a typical project you might get more focused feedback.

[SkiSouth]

I believe that Revit is the future of Autodesk. Adesk has a history of killing the competition by acquiring them. That being said, sounds like you do not even need ADT, almost "lite" would work for you. If everything you do is "drop dead" then I would question the whole approach you're taking. If you're making money now with the software you have, don't fix it.

However, per the recent post in "out there" You can't be afraid of the future and you must plan for it. In which case I would definitely get a copy of Revit and put the time clock aside - and YOU learn it. See just how great it is, and all the checks (spelled errors and omissions) that Revit offers.. Then once you're addicted to productivity, immediate changes, and a complete understanding of the project that all are working on by being able to visualize on screen, then make your decision to change to Revit :D

[FK]

Ryan,

I'm not qualified to give you in-depth guidance, but I've got a couple of thoughts.

First of all, you would greatly benefit from the services of a professional Autodesk rep or reseller that really understands Revit. You may search or ask around this forum for references.

Second, I don't think the idea with captain on Revit and drafters on Autocad is going to fly. I would suggest a pilot project where an entire team is using Revit while the other 8 stay with Autocad. You might not need as big a team, too.

Perhaps the folks from SOM will tell you more about their experiences jumping the chasm.

[Andre Baros]

First let me say that I am a big supporter of Revit. Bias aside, the issue that I think you are likely to run into is mixing Revit and AutoCAD teams. While it can be done, this back and forth would complicate the transition. I would recommend taking a pilot team and switching the whole group to Revit. When that works out you can slowly switch one group at a time.

Regarding your three questions:

1. I think you would spend less time training everyone to use Revit and step in where required, then trying to import and export w/ Acad every time that you need work done. The time will add up quickly.

2. Regarding structural, we don't do any complicated structural drawings here so everything that we need so far we can do with Revit and do it is at least 10 times faster than AutoCAD.

3. As far as getting people up to speed, we've only moved two people in our office over. Myself, which was very difficult because of all my AutoCAD and Max baggage, and a partner who had less computer experience and picked up Revit in just a few weeks and finished a custom home project using Revit (with consultants using AutoCAD) is just a few more weeks. Switching was very difficult for the first two weeks or so, but now that I'm accustomed to Revit, working is AutoCAD is torture.

Good luck and come back here for help as much as you need. As is often repeated in these forums, the tutorials are excellent and vital to complete.

[aaronrumple]

I also agree that trying to keep the drafting staff on AutoCAD and the job captain on Revit is a bad business plan. Your drafting staff will be no more productive than they are now.

With the right templates and families - your whole team should be able to really fly on modular buildings. It will take some implementation time, but well worth it.

[sbrown]

aaron is right on, If you spend time learning how to create all the families needed for a modular building, revit will benefit you greatly. However a partial commitment as you've described will be very difficult to make work. If you do try, make sure you change your acad standards to match revits likes, then you can use revit to coordinate the document set at least which is a plus. What I mean by this, is revit uses true type fonts not shx, so switch to using ttf in acad. Also you need to test out which leaders and dimension ticks will work well in the transfer.

[gregcashen]

I second the concerns about mixing Revit and Autocad in the manner described. Revit models will not update based on changes made to exported dwgs. You will lose the associativity of Revit and thus its main productivity tool. i think you will find that you are no more productive in this new arrangement than before.

That said, the structural tools are perfectly adequate to do what you want. I thik setting up a pilot program with the entire team on Revit would be a better solution.

[ilya.bass]

I second the concerns about mixing Revit and Autocad in the manner described. Revit models will not update based on changes made to exported dwgs. You will lose the associativity of Revit and thus its main productivity tool. i think you will find that you are no more productive in this new arrangement than before.

That said, the structural tools are perfectly adequate to do what you want. I thik setting up a pilot program with the entire team on Revit would be a better solution.

there are definitely ways to structure your work using X-Refs that will let you keep some of the model associativity. see this White Paper:

http://www3.autodesk.com/adsk/files/3968933_Revit_Interoperability_w_CAD.pdf

anyone tried doing something of the sort? Any issues?

[hand471037]

I've only done something like this where we were attempting to lock Area Definition lines within Revit to Polylines that were within linked DWGs. If you changed the DWG, the Area Lines in Revit would change too. It was pretty sweet. However, there were two issues; first off it wouldn't quite clean up the Area Lines within Revit to match the changed Polyline, it would only drag around the Area Lines as the Polyline had changed under it- so you'd get overlapping corners and such. Second is that we were having strange issues with the DWG links properly updating at the time (Revit 4.5/5) and decided it wasn't really stable enough to trust. But it was cool watching the lines in Revit update based upon the DWG...

Haven't looked at it serously sense.